


Drops

by More_night



Series: Drop [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Coda, Crime Scene as Date, Episode: s01e08 Fromage, Fluff, Hurt Hannibal, M/M, One-Shot, Written During Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 03:44:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5275232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/More_night/pseuds/More_night
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following the attack in his office, Hannibal wants to see Tobias Budge's den. Will accompanies him, pulled into the darkness. </p><p>Written as a coda to Fromage (1x08). As per the Hannibal Advent 2015.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drops

**Author's Note:**

> As it says in the tags, I literally scribbled this down on pink 'You Have a Message' paper slips during work today. I'm not sure how it makes me feel. 
> 
> Part of [Hannibal Advent 2015](http://existingcharactersdiehorribly.tumblr.com/post/133049889536/the-start-date-of-the-2015-hannibal-advent-draws).

Will had to stand back as two medics made their way to Hannibal. He stared away when they cut Hannibal’s pant leg up to the groin. The amount of blood he glimpsed surprised him, as did Hannibal’s stoical face as they prepared stitching material. It seemed private, but if Hannibal’s privacy had to be exposed, it had to be violent and destructive.

Turning away when the needle went into the pale flesh of the man’s thigh, near the gaping gash, Will made his way to Jack.

The broader man stood near the place where one of the bodies had fallen. The second one, Budge, Will thought, was being carried away on a stretcher in a black forensics bag. “What bothers you about this?”

“I don’t know yet. That bothers me more.”

“Didn’t Hannibal give you a statement?”

“You’ll be giving one too.”

Will sighed briefly, contained. “Hannibal specializes in treating patients with a history of violence. It makes sense that he knows how to defend himself, Jack. He should.”

Jack put his gloves on. “I want you on the analysis team.”

Will nodded, spreading his hands in his coat poackets, bowing to the power that emanated from Jack Crawford.

Once Jack had left the room, Will turned around. Hannibal was looking steadily at him. The medics had just left his side. When Will reached him, he finally took his eyes down and rose, the usual smoothness crumbling into rigid parts, falling off, like something deep inside was actively trying to piece itself back together.

Not waiting for him to ask, Will offered to drive him home. He gestured to the FBI personnel. “They’ll be here for a few hours still.”

Hannibal nodded, more hair falling before his eyes. He pushed them back on his head and contemplated the damage done to his office. The smashed tables, the stained carpet. Then he thought of the letter opener and could not find it near the desk. “The letter opener?”

“The golden one?”

“He used it to stab me.”

“Then it’s been bagged.”

Hannibal licked the split on his lip. “Is it possible that I may have it back?”

And Will did not ask why, suggest it would be weird, frown or inquire in any fashion. The small, understanding smile that showed on his face drew a sudden slimy warmth in Hannibal’s chest, somewhere near the pain from the cracked rib. Hannibal smiled too, mirroring blindly. “I’ll take it back to you after it’s been processed in forensics,” Will said.

 

* * *

 

Politely refusing Will’s assistance with an extended hand, Hannibal settled in Will’s car, submerged in the smell of dogs, old coffee, various human odors, mostly Will's, and a faint trace of turpentine.

Chandel Square was only twenty minutes away. For a moment, Hannibal thought that the drop in adrenalin, combined with the unexpected draft of endorphins that had filled his brain with the relief of seeing Will alive, would get the best of him, that he would just close his eyes and drift away. But he remained focused on the road.

They waited at a red light, before turning into his neighborhood. “Can I ask you a question?”

Will chuckled once. “Did they give you sedatives?”

“Yes, Valium. And Ibuprofen too. Why?” Hannibal asked around a smile.

The other man looked at him from the corner of his eyes. “You’re more considerate when you’re high.”

“Do you commonly find me to lack in consideration?”

Will shared his smile, mimicking body language or complicit, Hannibal could not quite say. “Most people find me rude. I'm surprised it never bothered you.”

”You stay true to the content of your thoughts on most occasions. It’s rare, if socially unfortunate.”

Will chuckled again, more bitter this time, but less so than normally. “Unfortunate is somewhat of an understatement.”

“Then it’s all for the best that we are not exactly socializing.”

“What are we doing?”

Hannibal paused. They were near his house now. The red maple on Merchant St. had grown, it would be due for pruning soon. “You use my first name with others. Why do you never do so with me?”

The car slowed down, Will stopped it in front of the house. “I always end up thinking that it's manipulative,” he said, detaching every word.

“Should I be offended?”

“You’re not maneuvering me. You’re... friendly.” Will unclasped his seatbelt. “I don’t think I’m good at being friendly.”

“Yet, I’m certain you can tell what’s on my mind now,” Hannibal said, taking his eyes from the house to Will.

The younger man examined him for a time, eyes not quite meeting his, but resting on different places on his face. “You’re not as shaken as you let on. Even if you may not be aware of it yourself,” he started, quietly. “And you want the see it. Budge, where he did it. You want to go.”

Hannibal did not detach his eyes from Will. “Would you bring me there?”

Will eyed the blood on Hannibal’s cuff. It had slid down his hand, coming from the wound on his forearm. “If you want to freshen up, I'll wait here. Then we can go.”

 

* * *

 

Hannibal had dressed in less formal clothes, face and hands washed, his hair loose over his forehead. Will was still not used to it, but now it was only new, not unsettling.

A police car and a small black van were still parked in front of the Chordophone shop. The grass was flattened where the bodybags had been laid, before being taken away. The faded guilt returned. If not for the hallucinated animal outside, these two officers might still be alive. And Will might be dead in their place.

He took a moment to consider if, really, he would have wished for that and found that he liked the simplicity of it. The flies, the worms, the flesh, leaving, floating, down, down. But then he would not have caught Budge. Maybe Hannibal would have killed him regardless.

At the edge of his vision, a flutter of black feathers drew his eye, but it was only a pile of dead leaves, blown over the lawn and into their legs.

They made their way inside and, while Will negociated with the officers guarding the basement, Hannibal stood back, observing the pool of blood. It kept a slick, oily shine as it started to coagulate, permeating the wood like an aura.

While Will led the way, Hannibal thought back to his last visit. He had not taken off his gloves. But now the place would be inspected more thoroughly.

He followed the younger man toward the basement door. Once it was closed behind them he said. “Before I warned you about Mr Budge, I came here myself.”

It was hard to judge of Will’s expression in the dark and narrow stairway. Hannibal heard him exhale sharply. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I fear Jack will share your disapproval.” They reached the bottom of the stairs.

“You’re not his subordinate. He might not show it as much,” Will said. “But just so you know, you could have ended up in one of those.” Will was pointing at a rectangular basin near the wall, where metallic cables held emptied bowels, already bleached, above a solution, chemical, acidic, though which acid, it was hard to tell. There were so many smells, although the prevailing one was the varnish.

The basement was not as well kept as his own. But then, he could concede, he was not a craftsman. A small, round puddle of blood sat on the worn wood of a chair, against which two cello poles rested, unmoved in the struggle, whose signs he now saw around the room.

“Did he try to run?” he asked.

Will turned to stare at Hannibal. The emotion on the older man's face was not quite fear, but not far from it either, he thought. Awe, maybe. Or a curiosity of the deepest sort. “No. I... heard something outside. When I got back in here, there was one officer dead in the room above us. The door to the basement was open. He waited for me there.”

“What happened?”

Will ran a hand up his hair and motioned to the end of the room with his bandaged hand. “There was another officer there, dead. I checked it out and Budge got at me from behind,” he explained.

There was a mess of strings tangled on the ground, behind the deeper basin and a folded, moldy grey blanket. The humid ground let off an almost candid, delicate smell of rot, most likely from flesh or blood, unavoidably spilled and soaked into the raw ground. Even younger, Hannibal had been more careful. This was a den, where the predator marveled at himself, first and foremost, a bed with crumpled, dirty sheets that one did not bother to make because it was his own. Hannibal always bothered, for the universe was always looking.

“I didn’t see it,” Will’s voice said, soft, composed, taking him from his contemplation. “Him,” Will clarified. “I looked at him in the face when I walked through the door and I didn’t see it.”

“You don't augur, Will.” Hannibal came closer to where the other man stood, eyes still lost in the basin where the officer had died. “Do you believe you would have known Garret Jacob Hobbs was doing what he did if you had simply crossed paths with him, on the street, going about your day?”

“I’m losing it. My empathy. It’s turning inward.”

“You’re afraid to lose your use for Jack Crawford.”

Will massaged his right temple. “Probably.” He stepped back. “Is your curiosity satisfied?”

Hannibal gave a slight smile. The sedatives’ effect was gone now. “Yes. Even though I don’t believe any object found here would quench it at the moment.”

“You were looking for death itself?” Will asked.

“Isn’t it what you pursue?”

“It doesn’t have a face. It comes only as a long ribbon of infinitesimal physical datas and evidence that don’t approach its whole nature.”

Hannibal moved closer and leaned over the basin beside Will. The dangling light above their heads shattered the images of their faces in the faintly rippled water. From time to time, a drop fell from the tap. They both stared at the remnants of bowels at the bottom.

“It’s not without beauty,” Hannibal pointed out.

“Is this what you’re getting out of this?”

“It seems more than enough. To witness the contradictory nature of horror and beauty inextricably entangled.”

Will’s eyes were on him now and, for one rare time, they did not let go. They hesitated still, Hannibal could tell. But they agreed, silently, still petrified from the contact with horror to let go entirely and glimpse the beauty that glimpsed at them, right now. “I know,” Will whispered, eventually.

Not breaking their gaze, Hannibal said, “I wonder how he managed to go unnoticed for so long.”

 

* * *

 

They circled the building and went back to the car. Hannibal leaned against the door and examined the house, its entrance criss-crossed in yellow tape. He seemed grave and serene, Will thought, in the distant glow from the streetlamp.

Making his way closer, Will looked more attentively, so that he did not notice Hannibal looking back at him. He had never shared this much obscurity with anyone. Up to now, he did not believe it could be shared.

Something in the other man’s body language changed minutely, and Will moved forward, maybe to reach for the handle and open the door for him.

Hannibal stopped him gently with a raised hand, lifting towards his face.

Will’s perception of Hannibal Lecter changed the way tectonic plates moved. He had not realized he had moved 8 mm a year, but now he was somewhere else entirely and the ground rumbled under his feet. It did not worry him, in fact the sways felt good, like if it organized the jerky flashes in his mind into a jest of light.

Hannibal stopped his hand mid-motion before it reached his cheek. “I was certain you were dead,” he said, his voice new, as if he had just again realized the meaning of the words.

Things where silent in Will’s head until his heart gave a single, loud, thumping beat against his chest, as if urging him forward. He took his psychiatrist’s hand and put it against his neck, watching Hannibal’s lips part slightly, surprise, curiosity and something else sunk in his eyes. Far under the irises.

“Budge walked into my office saying he had killed the men sent by the FBI to arrest him. For a long while, I thought I would never talk with you again,” Hannibal went on, fingers curling against his neck.

“How did that make you feel?” Will quoted.

“Guilty that I had sent you there. And, simultaneously, extremely vengeful.”

“You killed him for me.”

“Yes,” Hannibal whispered, voice low, but will terribly strong underneath. “Does it scare you?”

Will covered Hannibal’s hand with his own. Suddenly, the shapeless desire for Alana’s presence, vague, affectionate, close – it seemed funny and strange. The lit house, the evenings cuddled together with the dogs, the quiet dinners, and his mind roiling underneath, and the nightmares that would string him up, and the deaths he would keep dreaming about, and the right things he would not say at the right time. And he knew now that she was right. But it did not make him feel as alone as before. Now it seemed tiny and okay.

When he thought of Hannibal Lecter, he did not see his face, or his smile. He saw darkness unfolding, layers after layers of it, in the utmost grace.

Will shook his head slowly. “No. Does it scare you that it doesn’t scare me?” His other hand reached forward and grasped the lapel of Hannibal’s coat. He ran his thumb over it gently.

“No. I like it,” Hannibal said. He meant every word. He had never felt so transparent.

He knew it would be hard to let go of this feeling.


End file.
